Journeying and Journaling with God

Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Note: At the end of each chapter of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, I include two reflection/action sections. One is Your Journey and one is Your Journal. Today, I’m sharing a few sample Complaint/Lament Journey and Journal interactions to help you on your path of grief and growth—of finding God’s healing hope.

Your Complaint/Lament Journey

1. Biblical complaint/lament trusts God’s good heart enough to bring everything about us to Him. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being anger that pushes God away because you doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because you trust His good heart?

2. How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?

3. Perhaps you’ve begun to face your losses and crosses. Where does Christ fit into your picture? What are you doing with Christ in your suffering? Have you been able to share your heart with God? If so, what have you said? If not, what would you like to say?

Your Complaint/Lament Journal

1. What do you think the Bible teaches about expressing anger and disappointment to God? What passages could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?

2. Read Psalm 88—The Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul.

a. What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint to God?

b. If you were to pen your own Psalm 88, what would it sound like? What would you write?

3. Read Job 3:1-26; 7:1-10; and 10:1-22. Have you been here? How so? Pen your own Job-like expression of lament to God.

Join the Conversation

Which of the interactions/questions/reflections most resonate with you?

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss.

Facing Destructive Anger

Anger is the typical “second stage” in the world’s grieving journey. After denial ends, the truth sinks in. Something bad, horrific has occurred. We’ve lost something or someone dear to us.

Our loss frustrates our desires and blocks our goals. It ticks us off. We’re mad. We want to lash out. At life. At the world. At . . . God.

This is where grief gets very confusing for the committed Christian. We love God; we know He loves us. We know God is good; we know life has now turned bad. So we want to know, sometimes we want to scream it, “How could a good God allow such evil and suffering!?”

God Invites Lament

But dare we ask? Do we dare verbalize our complaint, our lament to God?

The Scriptures are clear—God invites lament, complaint. The Bible repeatedly illustrates believers responding to God’s invitation with honest words that would make many a modern Christian shudder.

I know what you’re thinking. “Didn’t God judge the Israelites for complaining?”

There are different words and a distinct context between the sinful complaint of the Israelites in Numbers and the godly complaint/lament of Job, the Psalmists, Jeremiah, and many others. Biblical complaint complains to God about the fallen world. Ungodly complaint complains about God and accuses Him of lacking goodness, holiness, and wisdom.

We must remember that Satan is the master masquerader (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). His counterfeit for biblical complaint is unhealthy, destructive anger. Satan wants us to substitute cursing for complaint.

Job’s wife fell into Satan’s snare when she urged Job to “Curse God and die!” She encouraged him to give up on God, on himself, and on life.

Cursing God demeans God. It sees Him as a lightweight, as an arid desert and a land of great darkness (Jeremiah 2:5, 19, 29, 31). Cursing separates. Complaint connects. Complaint draws us toward God; hatred and anger push us away from God.

Biblical Complaint: Telling God the Truth

What then is complaint? In candor we’re honest with ourselves; in complaint we’re honest to God. Complaint is vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

We needlessly react against the word “complaint.” “Christians can’t complain!” we insist. Yet numerically, there are more Psalms of complaint and lament than Psalms of praise and thanksgiving.

Complaints are faith-based acts of persistent trust. They are one of the many moods of faith. Psalm 91’s exuberant trust is one faith mood while Psalm 88’s dark despair is another faith mood. A mood of faith trusts God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In complaint we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

Join the Conversation

So what do you think. Can and should Christians “complain” and “lament” to God?